London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Taki Jr Ties the Knot

I’ve always liked Taki’s columns in the Spectator; for his sins, the man has a good heart and often writes with brutal honesty. Anyhow, Mr. Theodoracopulos’s son recently got hitched, with the priest shipped in from Staten Island, and the baptism of the couple’s six-month-old child (!) on the same day. You can read it all yourself. (The links are Taki’s).

Midsummer marriage

The Spectator, July 15, 2006
Rome

Frankly, this was not a cool wedding. There were no security guards, no stretch limos, no Liz Hurleys, no cutting-edge genetic technology, not even a same-sex marriage. Not very with it, I know, but there we are. John Taki and Assia got hitched last Saturday in the most magical setting I have ever seen a Xanadu. ‘And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills/Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;/And here were forests ancient as the hills,/Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.’

Old Sam Coleridge must have visited Prince Nettuno Borghese’s property by the sea, west of Rome, because what Kubla Khan decreed is where my boy got hitched. Assia’s father Count Maurizio Baudi di Selve and her mother Maria Grazia never let on what they had in store for us. Maurizio is the scion of the Borghese clan, the oldest princely family of Italy, and he began the celebrations on Friday evening in the Palazzo Borghese, with a small dinner for around 250.

Back in the good old days, Rome was led by princes who built palaces reflecting their power. The present head of the family still lives in an apartment there, sharing the rest of the palazzo with the Circolo della Caccia, Rome’s most exclusive gentlemen’s club. Liveried staff move silently, evoking a time when nobility led from the front. The place is so grand and so beautiful even I managed to behave. The trick for a successful wedding is to keep it small. Only good friends need be invited. The mother of my children, John Taki and I invited 90, Assia’s family 135. Not a freak among them, no stuffed shirts, no charlatans, just young people full of grace and manners to match their beauty.

Afterwards, on the terrace of the Hassler, we began to blow off steam. I had friends who had flown in from New York, Los Angeles, Athens and three all the way from deepest Mexico. The jet lag helped. At five in the morning, the management declared the bar closed because a few bores upstairs found it hard to sleep.

Next day was the big one, so I went to the Borghese Gardens and tried to sweat off some of the booze. After a while I had to sit down next to some fat American tourists who, I think, were complaining about the lack of air-conditioning.

Around five in the afternoon I was driven towards Anzio, where Nettuno lies high above the sea. A long alley lined with hay bales suddenly revealed a beautiful small chapel next to a handsome red house which I mistook for the main one. (It turned out to be the gardener’s cottage; some cottage.) Two large semi-circles of armchairs were provided for the guests outside the chapel. The ceremony was conducted by Father Ramsay, a close friend of my family who had flown in from Staten Island, Noo Yawk.

Though I say it myself, never have I seen a better-looking couple. The father of the bride is a tall and very handsome man, some 20 years younger than me, and when he came in with Assia, the Med glistening in the distance behind, the green walls of the surrounding woods, spots of light penetrating, the scene was so moving I almost blubbed. Close but no cigar. John Taki, an incredibly sloppy dresser, was for the first time in his life looking like Beau Brummell. He had spent three months preparing his sartorial triumph. Two violinists played Vivaldi and, after a ceremony conducted in English and Italian by the polyglot Father Ramsay, it was time for…yes, the baptism of Taki-Tancredi, aged six months. (Leave it to a son of mine to get married in front of his baby son.) My daughter Lolly was his godmother.

The party that followed I will not soon forget. We walked from the chapel to a wood under a canopy of pines where a jazz band played in the pink light of dusk. My friend John Sutin mistook the round tables lined with drink and pizza-makers for the real thing, and had 24 slices of freshly made pizza. As it got dark and we were asked to proceed to an open lawn under an 11th-century tower for dinner, Sutin looked like the proverbial cat that had swallowed you-know-what. Dinner under the stars, topiary transforming the house into a stage set, so many beautiful young girls, it was a bit too much for me. I got completely blotto, gave a good speech, and danced all night to Zulu music, something I don’t do that often. The newly-weds left as the sun was rising, on Bushido, anchored off in the distance and gave a long whistle goodbye. I thought I saw some dolphins escorting them away, but obviously my eyes were playing tricks. A long summer day and night had ended but the memories will always linger like echoes of the mind.

Published at 8:11 am on Monday 31 July 2006. Categories: People.
Comments

Taki’s son’s father-in-law is not a Borghese (perhaps his mother was?) and the Borghese are far from being the oldest of Rome’s princely families. They are in fact a family who go no further back in unbroken succession than to the father of Pope Paul V, who showered princely titels upon his nephew from the moment he ascended the papal throne (1605). In contrast, the Colonna descend, and as highest nobility, from the brother of two popes who reigned in the eleventh century: now that is antiquity!

— L Gaylord Clark 3 Aug 2006 2:50 pm

Dear Mr. Cusack,
I happened to randomly choose your website and read this midsummer marriage story…well, if we both know the same John Sutin, brother of Paul Sutin, from Geneva, Switzerland via Saanenland, he is the same proverbial cat that swallowed me when I was sixteen. You can now put a word to “you-know-what”, as when he turned eighteen and the proud owner of a red MGBGT,I was the timid, overweight, virgin Jewish daughter of a modest diamond-dealer whose blue eyes, brilliant mind, sense of humour and love of music and Yiddish blew him away – for a few days – a few weeks at most. I do have a love letter signed “your man in Geneva”, and I did have dinner with him again in Paris in 1980 in a Cuban restaurant. I had never tasted tequila before and almost vomited all over the front seat of his then yellow(really) Mercedes Benz.
We listened to people and lost touch.
My heart still skips a beat when I think of, hear or like today, see his name, for the first time in twenty seven years.
I couldn’t resist doing a vanity search on him, saw some pictures of a fund-raising dinner where there is a disappointing picture of him in a red jacket(really); apparently he has a beautiful wife and looks very jolly, as always, so let’s not make waves.
Send him my love, very quietly. I am so happy to know that he still behaves like a Peter Seller’s film character, is capable of eating four entire pizzas and looks like a Cheshire cat. For me, he will always be the Garfield of my teens.
What on earth is Zulu music?
Warm regards,
Evelyn(Evy)

— Evelyn Igielko-ASOR 2 Sep 2007 10:36 pm
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